Prosperity Assignment (short fiction)

Fiona Gorry-Hines

H-Block

White Sneakers

“Constant dropping wears away stones.”

-Poor Richard’s Almanac

Olive Doddes wore yellow rain boots to the first day of second grade even though it had been dry for weeks. They squeaked on the freshly waxed floors and dragged over the dry asphalt. The garish boots made her feet look too big for her gangly body. At recess, she jumped in the wood chips, staring at them as if expecting something to happen. We asked her what she was doing. Her wide brown eyes stared at us in confusion.

“I’m jumping in the puddles,” she responded as if it were perfectly obvious.

“But there aren’t any puddles, Olive,” we said.

             “I know,” she sighed. “I just wish that there were,” and she resumed her solitary game.

“I think she’s crazy,” whispered a pale girl with a turned up nose, just loud enough for everyone to hear. Olive froze in the woodchips as we walked away laughing. The next day, Olive wore white sneakers.

            Olive brought her pet rat to show and tell. It pointed its beady eyes at us and rubbed his pink nose on her neck. “His name is Ferdinand,” she said as his naked tail swung from her shoulder. She let him scamper down her skinny arm and cupped him in her hands. “Want to pet him?” she asked, offering the rat to the girl with the turned up nose.

 “Get that thing away from me!” she screeched. Olive stepped back.

“He’s my friend,” she insisted. “He won’t hurt you.” We turned up our noses to the terrified creature and Olive sat down as the girl presented her polished china doll. Next time we had show and tell, Olive looked around nervously when the teacher called on her. She tugged at the laces of her white sneakers and stared at the floor. “I didn’t bring anything,” she mumbled.

Olive had a rocket-ship lunchbox that swung at her side as she skipped down the hallways.

A boy with red hair told her “That’s for a boy.”

She tightened her grip on the red handle. “No, its for an astronaut,” she insisted. “It’s for an astronaut and that’s what I want to be.”

“Girls can’t be astronauts,” he sneered. Olive frowned and opened her mouth in protest.

“Let her go,” said the girl with the turned up nose. Olive released a sigh of relief and the lunchbox close to her chest. “I’d rather she lived on the moon anyway.”

Olive dropped her lunchbox and ran. We laughed. The next day, Olive dragged her white sneakers down the hall with her lunch in a paper bag.

In second grade we learned about the medieval era. When prompted to create a piece of artwork, the boys grabbed for the silver pencils to draw knights with slanted lines for eyebrows and sticks for legs. The girls clamored for the pink markers to create elegant dresses for our fair-haired princesses. In the corner, Olive spread out a large sheet of paper and the muddy watercolor pallets that had been tossed aside. At the end of class, Olive revealed an elaborate painting of a green dragon with fierce red eyes flying over a village in panic. The dragon bared it’s sharp, angular teeth and breathed fire over a mob of wailing stick-figures.

For a moment, we all studied the piece in silence. Our teacher appeared concerned and approached Olive. She knelt so that she was level with Olive’s, proud, paint covered face. “Olive?” she asked softly, “What made you draw an evil dragon?”

Olive’s expression fell immediately. “He’s not evil,” Olive defended. “He’s only breathing. No one understands him, you see, because..,,”

“Okay, sweetie. Just, um, next time, why don’t you draw a princess or something? I see Molly’s made a very nice drawing. Molly, why don’t you show Olive your princess?”

The girl with the turned up nose held up a picture of a smiling girl with a round head, pinks and yellow hair. Olive nodded and folded up her painting. It was still wet, and the paint dripped down the paper and stained her white sneakers. On the way out, Olive dropped her painting in the trash along with her paper bag lunch. The next time we had an art class, Olive drew a princess.

The first snowfall of that year came just before the holidays. At recess we sculpted snowmen and buried our faces in white fluff until our noses turned bright pink. We built two forts: one for girls and one for boys. The playground was our battlefield, and the snow our ammunition. Away from our childish battle-cries of mirth, Olive slid alone on the ice. The boy with the red hair snickered and whispered something to the other boys with their rosy cheeks and devious expressions. The red-haired boy scooped a fistful of snow, and within moments Olive was ambushed. Her white sneakers fell out from under her and she fell on her back. As he boys continued to hurl the snow balls, Olive just lay there. It wasn’t until they’d realized that she stopped moving that they their hands dropped to their sides. A few hid behind their fort, several stepped out and stared.

“Sarah!” the red-haired boy called out to me. I rose from behind our hiding place. The boy just pointed to Olive, her back still pressed to the thin sheet of ice that covered the pavement.

I looked down at the other girls. Their fair faces pouted, their pale eyes wide with a mixture of anxiety and guilt. The girl with the turned up nose nodded to me. I dragged my feet, weighted down by awkward snow boots, across the stretch of snow. As I neared Olive, still unmoving, I inhaled the cold air deeply and as it pierced my lungs I looked down. Olive’s wide brown eyes were fixed on the pale grey sky. Her coffee colored hands pressed against the ice and her black hair spread out like a fan. Tears streamed down her face, forming puddles at her jaw-line that she refused to wipe away.

“Olive?”

Olive rose stiffly. For a few moments, she looked at me and I saw my own reflection in her eyes. I saw the rain boots, the rat, lunchbox, and the dragon. She wiped away the tears with her arm and ran.  Her white sneakers were lost in the snow and she quickly disappeared.

I solemnly returned to my classmates who were gathered in a tight circle between the forts. We said nothing, but somehow we knew that we wouldn’t see Olive again, even if we never found out where she went. We knew that when she ran away in her white sneakers she was being chased by the rainboots, the rat, the lunchbox and the dragon. Every person our tight huddle knew that she wasn’t coming back. In the freezing  afternoon air, our visible breath pooled into the rising smoke that Olive Doddes disappeared in.